Columns

In case you've been in New Guinea or something, you ought to be told
that the Beatles have a new album out. It is called Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band, and even before its release on June 2 it
was the subject of all kinds of published and unpublished
rumors. Afterward, the information barrage was overwhelming. Capitol
Records sent out an extraordinary feature, spiced with terms like
"modals," "atonality," and--egad!--"bowels" and casting aspersions
upon the "Tin Pan Alley-spawned lyrical cliché." There were stories in
Life (in which Paul McCartney, to the surprise of no one and
the shock of quite a few, revealed that he had sampled the dreaded
lysergic acid diethylamide; he was seconded quickly by John and
George, but Ringo, lovely Ringo, has remained silent), Time (in
which George Martin, the group's producer, who has a degree in music
and is thus permitted to be a genius, was singled out as the brains of
the operation), and Newsweek (in which the former kings of rock
and roll were compared, unpejoratively and in order, to Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Edith Sitwell, Charlie Chaplin, Donald Barthelme, Harold
Pinter, and T.S. Eliot--and not to Elvis Presley or even Bob
Dylan). The trades bristled with excited little pieces that always
seemed to contain the word "artistic." And in The New York
Times Richard Goldstein put the album down and was almost lynched.

Goldstein, who has had his own story in Newsweek, is the
best-known critic of pop in the country. Like any rising star, he
engendered the inevitable ressentiment, always masquerading, of
course, as contempt for the phony, the sellout, etc.. I often disagree
with Goldstein, but a sellout he is not. He is unfailingly honest and
about as malevolent as Winnie-the-Pooh. There are very few "pop
critics" who can match him even occasionally for incisiveness,
perspective, and wit. Goldstein was disappointed with
Sgt. Pepper. After an initial moment of panic, I wasn't. In
fact, I was exalted by it, although a little of that has worn
off. Which is just the point. Goldstein may have been wrong, but he
wasn't that wrong. Sgt. Pepper is not the world's most perfect
work of art. But that is what the Beatles' fans have come to assume
their idols must produce.

It all started in December, 1965, when they released Rubber
Soul, an album that for innovation, tightness, and lyrical
intelligence was about twice as good as anything they or anyone else
(except maybe the Stones) had done previously. In June, 1966, Capitol
followed with The Beatles--"Yesterday" . . . and Today,
comprising both sides of three singes plus extra cuts from the English
versions of Rubber Soul and Revolver. The Beatles
(perhaps as a metaphor for this hodgepodge, which was not released in
England) provided a cover that depicted Our Boys in bloody butcher
aprons, surrounded by hunks of meat and dismembered doll. The powers
yowled, the cover was replaced as a reported cost of $250,000, and
then in August the American Revolver went on sale. That did
it. Revolver was twice as good and four times as startling as
Rubber Soul, with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands,
transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises,
and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a
foghorn.

Partly because the ten-month gap between Revolver and
Sgt. Pepper was so unprecedented, the album was awaited in much
the same spirit as installments of Dickens must have been a century
ago. Everyone was a little edgy: Could they do it again? The answer:
yes and no. Sgt. Pepper is a consolidation, more intricate than
Revolver but not more substantial. Part of Goldstein's mistake,
I think, has been to allow all the filters and reverbs and orchestral
effects and overdubs to deafen him to the stuff underneath, which was
pretty nice, and to fall victim to overanticipation. Although
Goldstein still insists he was right, I attribute his review to a
failure of nerve.

Plus, perhaps, a predilection for folk music. Sgt. Pepper, four
months in gestation, is the epitome of studio rock, and Goldstein
wasn't entirely wrong when he accused it of being "busy, hip and
cluttered." It contains nothing as lovely as "In My Life" on Rubber
Soul or "Here, There and Everywhere" on Revolver. But no
one seems to care. The week after Goldstein's review appeared, Cash
Box listed Sgt. Pepper as the best-selling album in the
country, a position it has occupied all summer.

Meanwhile, Goldstein himself has become a storm center. The
Voice, his home base, published a rebuttal by a guy named Tom
Phillips, who works for the Times. (Now who's square?)
Goldstein responded with a Voice defense of his review. (Title:
"I Lost My Cool Through the New York Times.") Paul Williams, of
Crawdaddy, complained that Goldstein "got hung up on his own
integrity and attempted to judge what he admittedly [sic] did not
understand." (What have you done for rock this week?) And the
Times was deluged with letters, many abusive and every last one
in disagreement, the largest response to a music review in its
history.

The letters are a fascinating testimony to what the Beatles mean to
their fans. The correspondents are divided about equally between
adolescents and young adults, with age often volunteered as a
credential. Needless to say, Goldstein is frequently accused of being
Old. (For the record, he is twenty-three. And I am twenty-five.) One
common complaint was that Goldstein missed the acronymic implications
of a lush little fantasy called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
(Singers on a trip with pretensions?) Even more common is the
indignant avowal that George Harrison's "Within You Without You" did
not, as Goldstein averred, "resurrect the very clichés the Beatles
helped bury," and that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," as Sherry
Brody, of Brooklyn, put it, "is not like other songs by stupid groups
that say I love you and junk like that." (I hope I don't sound
condescending. Miss Brody's letter is not only charming--she signs,
"Please write back!"--but every bit as perceptive as many of its more
ambitious competitors.) Of course, the clichés in "WYWY" to which
Goldstein was referring were not "I love you and junk like that." They
were "self-discovery" and "universal love," the kind of homilies that
used to make the Beatles giggle, but that Harrison now seems to take
seriously.

"WYWY" provides the most convenient launching pad for the textual
analyses that almost everyone felt compelled to send off. One writer
claimed that a book by William R. Shears (Ringo's persona on the
record is "Billy Shears"), called Here It Is, is full of
illuminating cross-references. A high-school freshman invoked the
album as an example of "tmesis--the appearance of a poem to do credit
to its words." Many saw the album as "an attack on middle-class
values." Some writers were sure the Beatles had arrived at their
current synthesis because, to quote a Juilliard student, "they have
refused to prostitute themselves for their fans." But others insisted
that Sgt. Pepper was "for the people."

The genius of the Beatles can be found in those last two contradictory
suggestions, because both are true. Few of their old fans could have
anticipated their present course or wished for it. Yet the Beatles
have continued to please more of the old-timers than anyone but
they--and the old-timers themselves--could have hoped. They really
started the whole long-haired hippie business four years ago, and who
knows whether they developed with it or it developed with them? All
those pages of analysis are a gauge of how important the Beatles have
become to . . . us.

One song on Sgt. Pepper, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,"
seems to me deliberately one-dimensional, nothing more than a
description of a traveling circus. It fits beautifully into the album,
which is a kind of long vaudeville show, but I feel almost certain it
has no "meaning." Yet one girl, "age fifteen," writes that it presents
"life as an eerie perverted circus." Is this sad? silly? horrifying?
contemptible? From an adult it might be all four, but from a
fifteen-year-old it is simply moving. A good Lennon-McCartney song is
sufficiently cryptic to speak to the needs of whoever listens. If a
fifteen-year-old finds life "an eerie perverted circus"--and for a
fifteen-year-old that is an important perception--then that's what
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" can just as well be about. If
you've just discovered universal love, you have reason to find "Within
You Without You" "great poetry." It really doesn't matter; if you're
wrong, you're right.

One of the nice things the Beatles do for those of us who love them is
charge commonplace English with meaning. I want to hold your
hand. It's getting better all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Fixing a
Hole," to which I alluded just above, is full of just such suggestive
phrases. I'll resist temptation and quote only five lines: "And it
really doesn't matter if I'm wrong I'm right/ Where I belong I'm
right/ Where I belong./ See the people standing there who disagree and
never win/ And wonder why they don't get in my door." This passage not
only indicates the interesting things the Beatles are doing with
rhyme, skewing their stanzas and dispensing almost completely with
traditional song form. It also serves as a gnomic reminder of the
limitations of criticism. Allow me to fall into its trap by providing
my own paraphrase, viz.: "In matters of interpretation, the important
thing is not whether you're `wrong' or `right' but whether you are
faithful to your own peculiar stance in the world. Those who insist
upon the absolute rectitude of their opinions will never attain a
state of enlightenment."

Well, there it is; I've finally done it. Pompous, right? Sorry, I'm
just not John Lennon. But like everyone else, I feel compelled to make
Our Boys My Boys. The first thirty times I heard "Fixing a Hole," I
just listened and enjoyed it, keeping time, singing along, confident
that it was obscure beyond my powers to investigate. Then I noticed
that all the interpreters were shying away from that song, or making
an obvious botch of it, and I couldn't resist the challenge. Now,
after several false starts that had me convinced for a while, I think
I've got it. It's not surprising that their ideas are so much like my
own. That's what they're saying, isn't it?

For, just like Sherry Brody, I have my own Beatles. As far as I'm
concerned, "Fixing a Hole" is not like other songs by stupid groups
that say I am alienated and junk like that. And I have other
prejudices. I can't believe that the Beatles indulge in the simplistic
kind of symbolism that turns a yellow submarine into a Nembutal or a
banana--it is just a yellow submarine, damn it, an obvious elaboration
of John's submarine fixation, first revealed in A Hard Day's
Night. I think they want their meanings to be absorbed on an
instinctual level, just as their new, complex music can be absorbed on
a sensual level. I don't think they much care whether
Sgt. Pepper is Great Art or some other moldy fig. And I think
they are inordinately fond (in a rather recondite way) of what I call
the real world. They want to turn us on, all right--to everything in
that world and in ourselves.

What else could a journalist think?

It is time for a progress report on the Monkees, who took a big gamble
by releasing an album and a single at about the same time as the big
fellas from England. The album, Headquarters, has not done as
well as Sgt. Pepper, but "Pleasant Valley Sunday" b/w "Words"
is two-sided top ten, whereas "All You Need Is Love" is one-sided.

My original analysis of the group pitted Mike Nesmith (struggling
singer, hence good) against Mickey Dolenz (ex-child actor, hence
bad). As it turns out, the real baddie seems to be the other ex-child
actor, Davy Jones, a repulsive showbiz type, cute as a push
button. The rest? Peter Tork is an anxiety-prone phony, Dolenz a
likable oaf with a strong voice, and Nesmith still the most talented
of the four, which may not be saying much. His "You Just May Be the
One" and "Sunny Girlfriend" are by far the best songs on
Headquarters and would sound good anywhere.

The Monkees began, if you'll remember, as poor vocalists and no
musicians at all, but now, as a note on the album proclaims, they are
Doing It Themselves. This means they are venturing live
performances. I saw them at Forest Hills, and they stank. That crisp
studio sound was weak and ragged on stage, and their Act (they tell
the press that the kids won't go for "four dots" anymore) was
unbelievably corny. The kids screamed, of course, but the stadium was
far from full, and the one lonely rush at the stage quickly stymied by
a bored and overstaffed security force. Good signs.

The day when a group could walk into a record company singing last
year's top ten and expect to get past the receptionist has
passed. "You don't write your own material!" today's receptionist is
trained to sneer. "Whatsamatter, you think we're some commercial
outfit? You're not creative. Get out."

This problem has been solved neatly by five musicians called the
Candymen, who backed Roy Orbison for years before going on alone. For
various good reasons they got to a club in New York with two original
songs. So they opened their act with a letter-perfect version of
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," followed by "With a Little
Help from My Friends."

Followed by "Gimme Some Lovin'," almost as good as Stevie Winwood.

Followed by "Good Vibrations," which is more than the Beach Boys can
do.

Followed by "Thunderball."

Their ambition is to step on stage some night and do all of
Sgt. Pepper live, with every studio effect pat. They may
succeed. Meanwhile, they are writing their own ma-teerial.

The Mothers of Invention pose the central question of contemporary
art, namely: Are you putting me on? Everything about them is
ugly. Presiding genius Frank Zappa seems to enjoy ugliness. His
apparent motivation is distaste for everything except modern classical
music and the alienation effect. "He's really weird," one graduate
teenybopper confided to me. "He doesn't even turn on." I guess that
says it.

Visually, the Mothers are reminiscent of the Fugs, old enough so all
that hair looks more skanky than cute. Musically, they are the Fugs in
reverse. The Fugs are poets who perceived the inherent sexuality of
rock and decided to go bardic. The Mothers are musicians who learned
during long hours in studios and crummy dance-halls that rock was
crude and often deracinated. They parody every popular music from
thirties-croon to Supremes (no Supremes fan could entirely survive the
sight of three hairy freaks prancing from mike to mike in a perfectly
hideous and hilarious version of "Baby Love") and their music is the
antithesis of soul: wooden beat, trite riffs, inane lyrics. Vocalist
Ray Collins can destroy any style, and the musicianship behind him is
always precisely awful.

The Mothers are very good on stage, but their records do not bear
repeated listening. Both Freak Out!, a double record that is a
great bargain at stereo price, and Absolutely Free, conceived
as two short oratorios, give the flavor of a Mothers performance. But
musical parody can satisfy for just so long, and Zappa's tastes in
social satire are less than subtle--the "plastic people" he is always
sniping at are an unoriginal and rather stationary target. And when he
moves into the aleatory-Varèse-jazz-rock composition that seems to be
his only true love, he does not impress my admittedly untrained ear.

I don't mean to be captious, though. See the Mothers if you can. Zappa
is very funny, and reed man Bunk Gardner is a great talent, much
better than Archie Shepp, whom Gardner professes to admire--along with
Herman's Hermits. And if you can't see them, buy a record--the
Zappa-designed jacket of Absolutely Free is almost worth the
price. Absolutely Free is better integrated; Freak Out!
has more music. Your choice.

I want to register a mea culpa on Jefferson Airplane. After
repeated forced hearings it is clear my put-down was a bad
mistake. The Airplane is one of the best--intense, original, yes,
soulful. The success of the Airplane's "Somebody to Love" and of the
Doors' "Light My Fire" is heartening. America, you are still out
there. . . . On the other hand, I will be disheartened if one of the
five singles recently released by Moby Grape--"Omaha" and "Changes"
are the best--does not become an enormous hit. The Grape ranks now
with the Airplane and the Doors among the new California groups and
has the potential to be the best in the country. . . . Camp triumph of
the year is "Albert, Albert" by the Bugs ("Albert, Albert, what the
heck/ You are just a pain in the neck"). The flip is "Strangler in the
Night," by "Albert De Salvo." No, I will not tell you how to get it.